While it's always a good time to visit Disneyland, there are times during the year that are better than others. Holidays, school schedules and yearly passholders greatly affect Disneyland's schedule. For example, Disneyland has a large number of locals. Many of those locals are yearly passholders, who think of the fantasy amusement park as their second home. They pop in for a few hours here or there — maybe on a weekday, or on a spring or fall Sunday morning before heading to the beach.

    Since the Happiest Place on Earth can be also one of the Busiest Places on Earth, it's helpful to have some tips in play when you hit the park. Here, we're outlining the best times to visit Disneyland in 2018.

    Weekdays in January (minus the week of New Year's Day)

    Weekdays in February (minus the days around President's Day)

    The first few days in March (until March 9, 2018)

    Weekdays in the second half of April 2018

    Weekdays in May

    The last two weeks of August

    The first half of September

    Mondays through Thursdays in November (minus the week of Thanksgiving)

    Mondays through Thursday during the first half of December

    If you're planning a visit, but don't see your particular dates here, click the comments below. We will be happy to provide answers. And our Disneyland Crowd Calendar is also available on line. It is a helpful tool to help you get an idea of expected crowds in advance.

    Long before iPhone, the cigarette was the companion of choice for restlessness. And long before Facebook and WeChat, it was tobacco that promised to better your social life. Now, quitting smartphones has become the new quitting smoking.

    Of course, technology does not yellow your teeth, cause disease or lead to cancer. But some individuals are so concerned that device addiction is damaging their mental health. In order to reduce their dependence, even in Silicon Valley, people are turning off the messages that constantly buzz for their attention, banning smartphones from the bedroom and, curiously, changing the colors on their screens to a less tempting scale of gray.

    The big tech companies will have to work out how to respond to this new generation of quitters. Facebook is the first to go public with its attempt, hoping its recent move can make the social network more homely.

Last year the tech industry got a bad name —Big Tech—with unfortunate echoes of other industries that have faced fierce opposition, including Big Tobacco. Like them, the tech industry has to reduce concern from a new generation of activist shareholders （股东） that are questioning its role in the world. These campaigns are never as fierce as those faced by Big Tobacco. In the 1990s, socially responsible investors refused to put money in tobacco stocks.

    It is far difficult for investors to challenge Big Tech and hard to separate the good these companies do in the world-connecting old friends and giving space for people to share their ideas-from the bad. In the meantime, stopping using technology remains problematic. In The World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, Franklin Foer argues that tech should be seen in a similar way to junk food: a convenience that some reject for more continuing nutrition.

    So we need to do more to turn the tide. In the same way that public service announcements made smoking around your children taboo （禁忌）, we can warn parents against losing themselves in their smartphones while taking care of kids. We can also create no-smartphone zones at dinner. Eventually smartphones could be banned from all public places and help us give our attention to the people around us instead.

    The extreme hot weather often makes people restless with sweats in summer. Even though people are annoyed by it, experts suggest that summer is the best season to give out your body's poisonous matters and refresh your energy.

    One popular choice is hot-stone massage(按摩). Therapists(理疗师)use smooth and heated stones, usually river rocks, to massage certain parts of the body, or set them on key points of the body. The warmth of the hot stones will promote blood circulation and also help muscles relax, while sweating is also believed to be good for letting out the body's poisonous factors.

    Another popular choice is hot-stone baths. The hot-stone bath will help the body give out poisons and humidity(湿气) that build up during the last winter. Summer is the best season to form a good body. Rather than use water or steam to heat and wash the body, people simply wear a coat or something comfortable, and then lie on heated stone tablets made of hot stones, which are warmed to around 45^oC. The body will gradually warm up and blood circulation will also be improved. More sweat will come out quickly. The sweat is smooth and fresh, not smelly like that released after sports activities. Such baths bring a number of health benefits, such as anti-aging, improved blood circulation and stress relief. The slimming effect of dieting can even be promoted.

    It dates back to ancient times to use hot stones for treatment, but the modern hot-stone massage generally owes to Mary Nelson, a native of Tucson, Arizona, America, whose trademark is "La Stone Therapy".

    The therapy is earning a good fame and popularity with many people, especially those who are often seated in cool rooms with air-conditioners. The hot-stone therapy can help cure many illnesses, back pain included.

    The World Health Organization recently said that it planned to add gaming disorder (游戏成瘾) to its new list of disease classifications, angering the gaming industry but pleasing doctors who hope it may make treatment more easily available.

    Some US experts said it would make little difference when it comes to helping people with the disorder, although others said it would bring attention to a disorder that people sometimes don't recognize. So some experts disagree WHO's plan.

    Many of us enjoy video games, but does playing our favorite game for a couple of hours every night mean we're suffering from gaming disorder? Not according to the WHO.

    The symptoms listed by the WHO include a lack of control over gaming, treating gaming more seriously than other life interests and daily activities, and continuing to play games despite the negative consequences that playing them might have.

    "The behavior pattern is enough to result in significant damage to one's personal, family, or social life." the WHO said.

    Meanwhile, Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University has carried out influential research into the cause of gaming addiction in young people." I and many others had assumed that gaming is not really a problem but is a symptom of other problems," he told NBC News. Many had thought it was simply a failure of self-control. To see if it was, Gentile's team studied a group of children who had been gaming for several years." We found that when kids became addicted, their anxiety increased … and their grades decreased," Gentile said. When kids were able to back off from gaming, their symptoms disappeared, he added.

    Gentile thinks medical organizations should pay attention to the WHO's proposal." This isn't an issue of opinion; it's an issue of science," he said." This is a major scientific and medical organization. They don't do things lightly and without reason."

    Dr Petros Levounis, chair of psychiatry at the New Jersey Medical School at Rutgers University, said that he hoped the WHO's proposal would lead to more research into obsessive (过度的) behavior among all types of people.

    "Now, there is renewed interest and excitement," he said. So some experts are in favour of WHO's plan.

    In many developed countries, people who have high degrees begin to work longer than those who don't. About 65% of American men aged 62－74 with a professional degree are in the workforce (劳动人口), compared with 32% of men who only finish high school. This gap is part of a deepening divide between the well-educated wealthy and the unskilled poor. Rapid technological advance has raised the incomes of the highly skilled while squeezing those of the unskilled. The consequences, for individuals and society, are profound (意义深远的).

    The world is facing an astonishing rise in the number of old people, and they will live longer than ever before. Over the next 20 years the global population of those aged 65 or more will almost double, from 600 million to 1.1 billion. The experience of the 20th century, when greater longevity (长寿) translated into more years in retirement rather than more years at work, has persuaded many observers that this shift (变化) will lead to slower economic growth, while the swelling (渐增的) ranks of pensioners will create government budget problems.

    Policies are partly responsible. Many European governments have abandoned policies that used to encourage people to retire early. Even the better-off must work longer to have a comfortable retirement. But the changing nature of work also plays a big role. Pay has risen sharply for the highly educated, and those people continue to reap (获得) rich rewards into old age because these days the educated elderly are more productive than the preceding (先前的) generation. Technological change may well reinforce (强化) that shift: the skills that complement (补充) computers, from management know-how to creativity, do not necessarily decline with age.

What is the best part of a typical relaxing summer day? Nothing is better than sitting in an armchair with a beer and some chips in your hand, enjoying the great comfort.

The much-loved combination of beer and chips is being exploited for the first time to deal with climate change. Chips firm Walkers has adopted a technique it says will cut CO₂ emissions (排放) from its production process by 70%.

The technology will use CO₂ captured from beer processing in a brewery (啤酒厂), which is then mixed with potato waste and turned into fertilizer. It will then be spread on UK fields to feed the following year's potato crop. Creating fertilizer normally produces high CO₂ emissions, but the technology adopted by Walkers makes fertilizer without generating CO₂. So, the beer-and-chips combination performs a double function. It stops the emission of brewery CO₂ into the atmosphere — and it saves on the CO₂ normally generated by fertilizer production.

This Creative win-win solution was developed with an approval from the UK government by a 14-employee start-up called CCm. The fertilizer was experimented on potato seed beds this year, and next year Walkers will install CCm equipment at its Leicester factory to prepare for its 2022 crop.

A decision has not yet been made on which brewery Walkers will work with on this. The new technology adds to carbon-saving techniques already under way. The firm has installed an anaerobic digester (厌氧消化池), which feeds potato waste to bacteria to produce a useful gas. The gas is burned to make electricity for the chip-frying process — so this saves on burning gas or coal.

The new system will go a step further by taking away potato "cake" left after digestion — and mixing the brewery CO₂ into it to make an enriched fertilizer which will help put carbon back into the soil as well as encouraging plant growth.

It's an example of scientists finding ways to use CO₂ emissions which otherwise would increase the over-heating of the planet.